In a location where competition amongst restaurants is fierce, the people behind 10 Greek Street (previously from the Wapping Project) have bravely decided to launch their Soho restaurant with a pared-down approach. Far from being overtly chic or stylised, the restaurant’s laid back stance means that there are no table cloths, that bistro menu is listed on the blackboards, and diners are required to pick up their own cutlery from each of the cutlery holders stationed on the tables. But the casual look of the restaurant feels perfectly nice. Its philosophy seems to be that it should be more about the food, a philosophy which I like.

We started with a soup of sweet potato, farrow, wild garlic and pecorino (£5). I had expected a strong aromatic flavour coming through from the garlic, but what we got instead was something rather bland, healthy tasting, but bland.

Soup

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Chop House head chef Martin Kroon

The Chop House at Butlers Wharf is hosting a series of butchery masterclasses at the restaurant.
Run by Head Chef Martin Kroon, we covered the butchery of a Blackface lamb from Ben Weatherall’s 6,000 acre estate in Dumfriesshire in South West Scotland.

The lamb

I covered lamb butchery when I attended Westminster Kingsway Cookery College, but I still found it interesting to watch the process again. Most of us tend to stick to best end, leg and shoulder cuts, but Martin proved very informative as he provided commentary during the session on how each cut of lamb should be cooked to achieve optimal results. Martin does all his own animal butchery. Purchasing an animal whole is more economical than purchasing cuts of meat. In this way, Martin is able to buy better quality meat for the restaurant whilst keeping his costs down.

Chef Martin showing off his butchery skills

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Corrigan's Mayfair

I must confess I didn’t have the best experience when I first tried Corrigan’s Restaurant. Having already eaten at Bentley’s and Lindsay House (Richard Corrigan’s previous one Michelin starred restaurant which now houses Gauthier Soho), I had expected better. But lots of positive comments since have convinced me that perhaps that experience could have been an anomaly. Anyway, things were set right last week when I went to try the spice menu at Corrigan’s which is available until 29 January 2012.

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Every time I have gone past Manson Restaurant on a Friday or Saturday night it always seems to be heaving with people. And with good reason. Perched on Fulham Road in Parsons Green, it has a ‘neighbourhood’ feel to it with the exterior exuding a certain charm and warmth which makes it hard to ignore.

The interior of the restaurant is just as pleasing on the eye. There is a separate bar area and lots of wooden touches throughout the restaurant to round of its cosy appeal. Stopping by for a Sunday lunch, I was pleasantly surprised the quality of the British cooking. A dainty looking dish of caraway cured sea trout (£7) was lovely. The tanginess in the side of pickled cabbage worked well with the fish, and the use of dill added a lovely fragrance to the dish.

Cured sea trout

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Delfina is a restaurant I discovered while on route to Zucca and Jose, all three of which are on Bermondsey Street near London Bridge. It has an inviting contemporary look to it – lots of white space – and its high ceilings can be attributed to the fact that it is housed in what was once a converted chocolate factory. The building is now used for exhibitions and the like, and the restaurant opens for lunch from Monday to Friday, and for dinner on a Friday night.

On the Friday evening of our visit we tried seared scallops (£7.50) which disappointed. The scallop had started to go bad with an unpleasant taste to them. Furthermore, they weren’t really scallops (plural), but one scallop cut into two. The accompanying saffron cauliflower was also a touch underdone.

Scallops

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I had never been to a Boisdale Restaurant before but I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how much I enjoyed the experience. There are four outposts: Canary Wharf, Bishopsgate, Wiltshire, plus the one that I visited which is in Belgravia. This is the original Boisdale and was opened in 1985 by Ranald Macdonald, the eldest son of the 24th Chief of Clanranald.

A happy blend between Scottish restaurant, jazz club, whisky bar and Cuban cigar haunt, this place exudes a traditional, easy charm. Some of this can be attributed to the décor, a mixture of rich reds, dark greens, mahogany and tartan-covered furnishings. But I think most of it was due to the lovely jazzy tunes being belted out by the fantastic jazz band that was there for our entertainment pleasure. Whatever the reason, the vibe at the Boisdale Belgravia works.

Boisdale are operating an Oyster Festival Menu (6 oysters plus three courses) until April 2012 which I tried. To kick off was a selection of oysters, judged by a panel from Boisdale and The Wright Brothers as being the best rock and native oysters. These included a couple of different Maldon Rocks which I loved for their meatiness, a Duchy of Cornwall No.3 which had a deep mineral flavour, and a Loch Ryan Scottish No. 2 which was voted the winner with its particularly complex flavour.

Oysters

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Ducksoup has to be the most interesting restaurant name to hit London in recent times, at least I think so anyway. Brought to us by a team of people who previously worked at the Hix chain of restaurants (chef Julian Biggs, Clare Lattin and Rory McCoy), it adopts a similar formula to the one tried and proven in the Russell Norman empire (Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino, da Polpo) of great location (Dean Street), no bookings except at lunch (very annoying), and reasonably priced food (always appreciated).

But Ducksoup’s approach is slightly more no-frills, so much so that paper napkins come from paper napkin dispensers. The décor is also simpler. It’s comfy, but cool like Spuntino it is not.

There are a number of bar food options, mostly at £3.50, which is great value for this part of town. From the daily changing hand written menu (dotted with a few spelling mistakes) we went for the bar choice of bitter greens with gorgonzola. This was really impressive with the greens being fresh, crispy and nicely dressed. The gorgonzola was creamy, rich and served at the correct room temperature.

Bitter greens

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Note: Ben Spalding has now left Roganic.

Roganic is the two year pop-up restaurant recently opened by Simon Rogan (hence the name Roganic), the head chef behind the critically acclaimed L’Enclume in Cumbria. The pop-up reference relates to the fact that Roganic takes over the remaining two years of the lease at 19 Blandford Street in Marylebone, previously the restaurant, Michael Moore. The current intention may be to operate Roganic for two years only, but it gives Rogan and head chef Ben Spalding a chance to bring to Londoners a sample of the innovative cooking that made L’Enclume such a go-to restaurant for foodies.

Two years hardly feels like a pop-up. Be that as it may, it does go a long way in explaining why Rogan has decided to spend very little on refurbishing the restaurant. The dining room is tiny and the décor is rather bland, but with only 25 covers it’s comfortable enough.

There is a choice of two tasting menus, a 6-course menu for £55 and a 10-course menu for £80. Allegedly, both menus are designed such that you receive the same quantity of food, even though you obviously get fewer courses with the smaller tasting menu. We started with an amuse bouche of squid ink flatbread with aioli, linseeds and cucumber mousse which was lovely. With its delicate hints of cucumber, it was light and refreshing.

Squid ink flatbread

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